Run Before the Wind Page 3

I fled to London, with Paris planned for my next stop. I never made it to Paris, for after London my life spun unexpectedly onto a new course, like a frisbee caught by a gust of wind, and nothing was ever the same again.

  3

  I SPENT a week in London. I found a cheap hotel in the Bayswater Road. I did the sights, the museums, and the pubs, but I was depressed about my failure with Connie Lydon. I was on my own, now, but somehow the feeling of freedom I had expected still eluded me.

  At the end of my allotted week I set out for Paris, taking a train from Waterloo Station to Southampton, from whence I would take a ferry to France. At the ferry office pandemonium reigned; most of England, it seemed, was on its way to France, and no passenger space was available until the following day. I spotted a ferry to Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, a name I recognized from the yachting magazines I had read during my summers at sailing camp. It seemed worth a look.

  The Isle of Wight, I learned from a fellow passenger, used to be part of the English mainland, but the sea came between the two, and they are now separated by a riverlike band of water known as the Solent. We steamed down Southampton Water and entered the Solent. I was astonished at the number of sailboats plying the waters around us. My informant explained that it was the last day of Cowes Week, which I knew was an old and famous regatta. As the ferry approached the terminal he pointed out the sights: the Royal Yacht Squadron, the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club, the Royal London Yacht Club, and, riding regally at her mooring, the enormous white shape of the Royal Yacht, flying her white ensign. Even the Queen came to Cowes Week.

  I stepped from the ferry into a maelstrom of foot traffic in Cowes High Street, hundreds of people, nearly all in some vestige of nautical clothing—rubber boots, peaked caps, bright yellow or orange slickers—packed into a tiny village on the water. Every other shop seemed to be a chandlery or a bookstore specializing in the nautical. Over an occasional low building I could see thickets of masts, and when I walked toward them I came upon marinas and boatyards lining the waterfront. I wandered among them, down floating catwalks past boats of every description, from small, family cruisers to bigger, more exotically equipped yachts whose sleek shapes could only have been designed for racing. A parade of other boats, some under sail, others motoring, was coming in from the Solent, each seeking its berth.

  Everywhere there were young people on boats, repairing sails, scrubbing decks, sorting through the incomprehensible bits of some piece of nautical machinery, hauled in slings to the tops of sixty-foot masts, in the water examining rudders and bottoms, and here and there, sharing cold beer, or simply sleeping on a sunny deck. I envied them their their obvious feeling of community. There was a clear line drawn between them, on the boats, and me, a tourist, shorebound. I was standing at the end of a dock where a lot of dinghies were tied when I saw something very odd. A yacht, of perhaps forty-five feet in length, was drifting slowly backward about a hundred yards out.

  I watched, waiting for someone to come on deck and take charge, but no one did. There seemed to be nobody aboard. Then I saw the slack anchor line extending from her bows. The yacht was unmanned, had broken loose, and was drifting downstream in the ebb-tide current. On the dock where I stood, a boy of about ten was climbing into a rubber dinghy with a gasoline tank for its outboard.

  “Hey,” I called to him. “Can you operate that thing?”

  “Of course,” he replied, disdainfully. “I run it all the time.”

  “Well,” I said, pointing across the water, “that yacht seems to be adrift. You want to run me out there and see what we can do about it?”

  His head jerked around and his face lit up. “Oh, wow! Hop in!”

  He quickly connected the gas tank and started the outboard. The yacht had drifted another hundred yards in the meantime and was moving rapidly toward a line of moored boats, all much smaller. “Better open up your throttle,” I said to the boy. “If that boat hits any of those others, they might break their moorings, and then there’ll be more than one adrift.”

  “It’s already wide open,” he shouted back over the little motor’s roar. “It’s only six horsepower.”

  We were not overtaking the yacht fast enough. I watched in horror as it drifted down onto the smaller boats, then in fascination as it swung slowly about and slipped through the moorings as if being steered. But beyond were larger yachts at their moorings, and that sort of luck couldn’t hold out. We were catching up now.

  “Just come alongside her, then stand off while I find another anchor.” The boy followed my instructions expertly, and I was able to grab the yacht’s stern railing and hoist myself aboard. I ran along the deck to the bows and got hold of the anchor line. It was slack, as I had thought; there was no anchor on the other end. I opened the anchor well in the forepeak, but there was no second anchor. We were drifting down onto the next line of moorings quickly, now; I was running out of time. I ran back to the cockpit and found the engine controls. At least I could motor her out of trouble and get some help. There was no ignition key. I tried the main hatch, thinking a key might be in the chart table; The hatch was padlocked. Shit.

  We were now practically on top of the next line of moorings. The yacht had swung about again and was drifting backward. As we came down onto the moored boats I stepped outside the stern railing and tried to fend off the first one, but to no avail. There was a great crashing and scraping as the two hulls met, and I was nearly thrown overboard. The damage done, I tried to hold the two boats together, but we were moving too fast, and the other yacht’s lifelines were torn from my grasp. As the two yachts cleared each other a man with shaving soap on his face came charging on deck.

  “What the hell is going on?” he shouted.

  “I’m sorry,” I yelled back, “but this thing is adrift. I couldn’t stop her.”

  “Well, you’d bloody well better get an anchor out before you hit that!” He pointed astern. I turned and saw two craft. The first was a small cruising boat of about twenty-five feet, which it seemed we would miss; the second was not a small cruising boat. It was the Royal Yacht, and there was not the slightest hope of missing her.

  I stood, frozen, watching this horrible thing happen. Men in white uniforms rushed to the railing, and somebody began shouting at me through a loudhailer. I could only mime a huge shrug. We were nearly upon the smaller yacht, now, and I wished to God we’d hit her, somehow become entangled with her and stop, but it was becoming very clear that we were going to miss her. With one last rush of adrenaline I ran forward and began pulling in the slack anchor line. If there were somebody aboard the other yacht perhaps I could throw it to him. Standing in the bows of the drifting yacht I could see clearly into the cockpit of the other boat, now; what I saw was another padlocked hatch. Nobody aboard; we were going to miss her by some yards. My heart sank. I wondered how I was going to explain all this, or if I would even be allowed to explain before they took me out and shot me.

  We were parallel with the small yacht, now, and she was my only hope. The distance between the two boats was one I would never have attempted ordinarily, but even being in the water seemed a better alternative than being aboard the boat that struck the Queen’s own yacht. I got both legs outside the bow railing, gathered myself, and, holding the anchor line in one hand, leapt into space. It seemed beyond belief, but I made the stern railing of the smaller yacht, at least, part of me did. My feet didn’t make it, but I had an arm around the railing, and I managed to snub the slack anchor line around it before it pulled tight. Still scrambling to get my feet under me I held the line as it tightened. As the light railing took the load of the larger yacht there was a horrible groaning sound, then the bolts fastening the rail to the deck of the yacht popped, and the rail, with me still clinging to it, began to straighten.

  Then everything stopped. The larger yacht stopped drifting, and the rail stopped straightening. It wouldn’t last long, I knew, before the remaining bolts popped, and I scrambled aboard. By bracing my feet against the cockpit coaming an
d pulling with all my strength, I began to take the load off the railing and get some slack in the line. I got one foot of slack, then another, then I began to look for something substantial to snub it around. The little boat’s cleats did not look made for this sort of load, so I went for one of the main winches. Finally, I got three turns of line around it and cleated it. I looked about. The smaller yacht was at anchor, and, miraculously, the anchor seemed to be holding. A couple of hundred yards away a white motor launch was racing toward me from the shore.

  The launch, which bore the initials of the Royal London Yacht Club, came alongside and two men hopped aboard the small yacht. We transferred the anchor line to the launch and she prepared to take the large yacht in tow. I explained briefly to the coxswain what had happened.

  “This is our Mr. Thrasher’s boat,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll want to thank you.”

  “That won’t be necessary, but you’d better have him get in touch with this yacht’s owner, and that one over there, too. I’m sure they’ll want to talk with his insurance company.”

  “Right. We’ll give you a lift in, then.”

  I beckoned to my young friend in the dinghy, who was still standing by as instructed. “Thanks, I’ve got a lift.” I jumped into the rubber dinghy. “Okay, let’s get out of here,” I said. I wanted to put as much distance as possible between me and this incident.

  “Gosh, that was something!” the boy shouted. “I didn’t think you were going to make it when you jumped.”

  “Neither did I,” I replied. “Can you drop me where you picked me up?”

  “Sure. Wait’ll my father hears about this!”

  I didn’t want to meet the boy’s father. I didn’t want to do any more explaining to anybody. All I wanted was to get my gear and disappear into the High Street crowd. When we got back to the dock from which we had departed, my duffle was gone. Terrific. I had my passport and travelers’ checks in my pocket, but everything else I owned except the clothes I was wearing had been in the duffle. The boy, too excited to notice, ran off in search of his father. Shaky and pissed off, I went in search of a drink. That was when I saw the girl, and suddenly I forgot how tired and angry I was, forgot about my duffle.

  4

  I SAW tawny hair with bright, sun-bleached streaks falling down to shoulders clad in a yellow sweater, which gave way to perfectly fitting jeans, which ended, quite some distance later, in yellow rubber boots. Before I could see more, a pile of sail-bags from a big racing yacht came between us. I forgot the boats and hurried to get a look at the rest of this creature. I caught sight of her again, then she turned a corner and was gone once more, but not before I had glimpsed a high cheekbone and an ample breast. I half ran to the corner. She was gone.

  I was looking at an open lot filled with boats ashore for repairs, piles of lumber and parked cars. I chose a direction and jogged through the space, craning my neck here and there. I was approaching another, smaller marina; I could see the masts beyond. Then a flash of yellow through a stack of lumber made me turn toward the water. I was walking quickly beside the long stack, peering through whatever cracks presented themselves. I caught a glimpse of a chin, a snatch of sweater, a flash of hair as she walked quickly along the other side of the lumber stack. I had just gotten a fraction of a second’s look at a whole face when my viewpoint changed radically. I pitched forward and fell eight feet, head first, into the Medina River.

  When I came up, before I could clear my eyes of water, I could hear her laughing. I mopped away water and a clump of weed and looked around. She was standing on a floating dock a few yards downstream; I drifted toward her.

  “That was marvelous,” she shouted. “Do you do regularly scheduled performances, or was this a one-off?”

  “Just this once, and only for you!” I yelled back, coughing and sputtering.

  “I shouldn’t swallow any of that,” she called, as I swam for the dock and continued to spit out water. “I should think half the toilets in the marina are flushing just about now.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, hauling myself from the water. She was English. I had never met an English girl before.

  “Come along, we’d better get you dry.” She turned and walked down the dock. I followed her like a wet puppy. “You’re a Yank, are you?” she asked.

  “I’m an American—from Georgia, in the South. We respond poorly to being called Yankees.”

  She laughed—a wonderful, rich sound. “Gone with the Wind and all that?”

  “Now you’ve got it.”

  “Here we are.” She stepped lightly onto an attractive sailboat of some thirty-odd feet. The name, Toscana, was painted on her stern. “Shoes off.” She pointed to my heavy hiking boots. “Odd footwear for around boats. You’ll have to get some deck shoes if you hang about Cowes for very long.”

  “I had some deck shoes,” I said, “but somebody’s just lifted them, along with all my other gear. I shucked the boots while she fiddled with a combination lock on the hatch of the boat. I explained to her what had just happened.

  “How exciting!” she laughed. “You should have hung about; the Queen might have knighted you for services to the Crown.”

  “More likely I’d have been mistaken for the owner of the boat and sent straight to the dungeons. Jesus, I’m freezing, can I borrow a blanket or something?”

  “I think we can find you something to wear,” she said. Momentarily, she tossed a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and a towel into the cockpit with me. “You can change in the heads.”

  A few minutes later I was sipping strong tea and having a close look at my hostess. Broad forehead, longish nose, clear, tanned skin, huge eyes. I reckoned she was a couple of years older than I. Her hands were bare of rings. It had been worth the dive. Whose clothes was I wearing, I worried. It especially worried me that they were too big.

  She leaned over from the galley and stuck out a hand. “I’m Anna Pemberton-Robinson. Mouthful, isn’t it? Annie will do for the first, Robinson for the second.”

  I took her hand. It was strong and surprisingly tough for a girl’s. “I’m Will Lee.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Willie.”

  “No, that’s Will … Lee.”

  There was a scuffing of feet on deck and a voice called down, “Hello … visitors!” Two men descended through the companion-way—two very different men. One was about thirty, handsome, tanned, athletic-looking, wearing jeans and a light slicker over his bare chest. I am six feet one inch tall, and as I rose to meet them I could stand erect in the boat’s cabin. He had to stoop.

  “Oh, Mark, this is Willie Lee,” Annie said. His hand enveloped mine, and I felt that he could have crushed it to pulp had he wished to. Now I knew who the clothes belonged to. “Willie, ah, had a little accident; those are his things drying in the cockpit. Willie this is Mark, and …” She turned toward the other man and offered her hand.

  “I’m Derek Thrasher,” the man said smoothly. Everything about him was impossibly smooth. He was not handsome, he was beautiful. He seemed in his late thirties and was as tall as the other fellow, Mark, but slimmer, gorgeously barbered, exquisitely dressed in a cashmere blazer and white flannel trousers, a yellow silk shirt, and an ascot tied at the throat. I had never seen a man wearing white flannel trousers and an ascot, except in the movies, and he looked perfectly comfortable and unselfconscious in them. He looked as much at home with the soft, glossy loafers in his hand as another man would with them on his feet. His handshake was firm, personal, but his hand was as soft and buttery as the shoes in his hand.

  “He is Derek Thrasher,” Mark echoed, “and he thinks he might like to sponsor a large effort in the Singlehanded Transatlantic Race.”

  Annie’s face was lit by the broadest of smiles. “Oh, Mark,that’s wonderful! Mr. Thrasher, I can’t tell you how delighted I am … ”

  Thrasher held up a perfectly manicured finger. “It’s Derek, please.”

  “Of course.” She began rummaging in the galley icebox and produced a bot
tle of champagne. “I’ve had this on hand just in case.”

  Mark opened the bottle, and we settled ourselves about the cabin settees. I had obviously stumbled into the middle of a very happy event for all these people. Thrasher and Annie immediately launched into a discussion about boats. I leaned toward Mark and said, “Excuse me, I didn’t get your last name.”

  He flashed a wide smile at me. “Pemberton-Robinson,” he said. “Robinson will do, Willie, if that’s a bit of a mouthful for a Yank.”

  My anxiety at the news of his name was so keen that I didn’t bother to correct him on either my name or regional loyalties. “Ah … you and Annie are … ?” Brother and sister, I said directly to God. Please let them be brother and sister.

  “Man and wife, old chap.” He grinned. There was sympathy in his voice. “Sorry.”

  5

  “YOU MISSED all the excitement,” Mark said to Annie. “Derek’s boat lost her anchor and bloody nearly went into the Royal Yacht.”

  I turned to Thrasher. “Was that your boat?”

  He nodded ruefully. “I’m afraid so.”

  I felt a rush of anger. “Well, for Christ’s sake …”

  “And this ….” Annie interrupted, pointing to me, “is the fellow who rescued it.”

  “Really?” Thrasher exclaimed, “I certainly want to—”

  “What sort of ground tackle did you have out, anyway?” I persisted, hotly. Now I had the bastard at hand whose negligence had caused all this bother, and I fairly flew at him. “Do you have any idea of the damage that could have caused?”

  “Of course,” he said placatingly. “It certainly could have been much worse, I know. We had out a forty-five-pound Danforth anchor, four fathoms of half-inch chain, and thirty fathoms of two-inch warp in seven fathoms of water.”

  “That should have held in anything but a hurricane,” Mark chimed in, “but you should have seen the anchor line; sawn right through.”